Abandoned Cistern

A few raindrops 

make it through

brush overgrowing

an ancient cistern.

They make the 

slightest sound

as they hit cool

still water. The

cistern used to be

famous. People 

gathered there. Some

were important

and carried themselves

so. Posture, gestures,

clothes, high talk.

They knew and didn't

know that one day

it would be as if

they'd never been 

anyone, anywhere, 

anything. 

A Place to Live

I did not dream I was

assembling an encyclopedia

of all the dreams I'd dreamed.

I did dream an old dream

of searching for a place to live

in of all places Davis California--

wandering in a warm anxious

night of delta breezes,

pressed but plodding--

my usual anti-style.

I never find the place, nor

the elusive seminar 

in German that will allow

me to finish the Ph.D.--

retroactively. Short breaths

and writing wake me. 

I've planned

tonight to dream about your

dream--that spectacular one,

full of light--vibrant street

stirring, with that strange

person in a dark cafe 

who asks to know all about

your life but won't listen. 

If this doesn't sound like

something you'd dream,

please tell your subconscious

mind to text me

from the Cloud, and I will

explain further, but the main

thing is I hope you've 

found a place to live. 

hans ostrom 2021

At Any Rate, Fate

It's coming down the mountains.

  It's climbing up the trees.

It's bubbling up from sidewalks

  And rising to my knees.

It knows bad jokes

  I often told and

Knows each time I cried.

  Doesn't care about my failures

Or all those times I lied. 

It is the Master of the Actual,

  the Mistress of Right-Now.

It's Fate that's heading hard my way.

  I don't know When or How. 

hans ostrom 2021

Midday

(considering Arkady Plastov's 

painting, "Midday," 1961, Russian

Museum, St. Petersburg)

This view will never tell me

what's between the woman and man--

love? Siblings? Friends? It makes me

feel heat lean into their backs

as they lean over that dark wood trough.

Only summer light infuses weeds and

grass this way, gives  them  a furnace

glow. A swooning heat of dreams.

She'd love to bathe, pats her head with

water with her right hand, cups some

in her left. He wants to drink. In

weeds the motorcycle's lean and red,

a bulbous lamp. I say this is a work-

break and think of midday respite

from work in the Sierra. If I stood

with them, I'd used both hands

to cool my face, my neck. I see 

bugs in that grass, youth in those

backs. After the snarl of that bike

fades, I'll slip into the painting,

watch trough-surface tremble,

settle, feel the waterlogged wood,

hear the hiss of grass, feel

sorrow, look for shade. 

hans ostrom 2021

Fires in the Pacific West

Blue wood smoke from wildfires

100 miles away choked the copse.

A morose old traveler sat down 

in it beside a pond. He thought At

least the pond's still here. As was

his fear for everything. An

hallucinated frog lifted its head

from the smoke-scummed water

level, said Nothing you will ever

write, say, do, or think will change

this world, okay? The old man

had always loved amphibians,

the great adapters. He asked Should

I stop caring, then?  But the frog

had absented its green mirage, 

and so: alone, talking in the woods.

Even if you try to be loud, your

voice sounds less than the tiny

ratchet-grind of one grasshopper

leaping. Yes, no more caring today.

Only walking. To home. If it's still

there. If not, more walking. 

hans ostrom 2021

Talking at Night

Maybe you're high, maybe not.

Either way, you're half of 

a conversation that grows

in the night. A seed of chit-

chat roars into a jungle 

of topics, blather, laughter,

and--for this neighborhood,

anyway--deep questions.

You wonder, at the end of 

night, what these are for,

these night talks. Nothing's

bought or sold, no politics

of the moment, name-dropping,

weather, or work. Nor set stories,

thank god. Just talk--

rare these days, these days

when words get nailed to 

walls, kidnapped, suffocated

by intent ignorance, shot dead. 

Just talk, easy as a summer tide.

hans ostrom 2021

Breathing in Blue Lunar Light

He had intended 

to seize the day.

Then night came.

Day slipped away.

He was relieved. 

Night seized him. 

Hot winds and nausea. 

He didn't believe what

he knew or know

what he believed.

Waking, midnight, he

saw blue lunar light

that mellowed air,

turned worries  slight.

He breathed. And breathed. 

hans ostrom 2021